You see them everywhere this time of year.  “Predictions for the New Year.”  “Annual Trends Update.”  “Our Forecast for 2018.”  It seems as though suddenly there is no shortage of insight and ability to predict what lies ahead for your organization or profession.

Will they be right? Does it matter?  It is pretty easy to become a little cynical.  And in truth, what your work group or organization accomplishes this year probably has more to do with your own decisions and actions than the myriad of external issues and trends stuffed into these communications.

A good Plan must be relevant. Still, looking outside your organization from time to time is one important way to remain relevant, and even to innovative.  With today’s pace of change, you need to be comparing your strategy to industry trends and customer needs on a regular basis.  So before you make a New Year’s Resolution to ignore all this prognostication, consider selectively using some of them to check the strength of your Strategic Plan or Goals.  If you choose to do so, you’ll be gaining time, not wasting it.  Here’s how.

Leverage the work of others. Well-done Annual Assessments and Forecasts are a compendium of a variety of information from multiple sources.  And the best ones include a sort of “meta-analysis” where the information is compared and combined to create additional insight.  Usually, they are the result of many hours of thoughtful work (I know becouse I’ve worked on some).  So reviewing their end product saves you time...the time you would have spent finding, analyzing, and summarizing the same information.  And, you gain the perspectives of others beyond your own.

A farmer’s market of insight. In addition, the information is relatively fresh.  The sponsoring organizations time these reports to be published on or around the change of the calendar year (Autumn is another popular time). In doing so, they schedule the work and retrieve “last minute” updates as close to the publication date as possible so the information is not seen as outdated.  As a result, this is the time of year you can get a fair amount of relatively new information all at once.

Listening...and Looking.   I recommend that my clients always be on the look-out for relevant information on the issues and trends confronting their industry or profession...a sort of "continuous listening" mode.  But in addition to this passive approach, it’s a pretty good idea for leaders to actively go looking for the latest news on issues and trends 2 or 3 times a year.  January should be one of those times.  After all, there are organizations anxiously serving it up for you.

If you want help tapping relevant assessments of your profession or industry, now or any time in the coming year, contact me at your convenience.

Jeff